


Sick Puppy

by lecterisms



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: 5-10 years post the wrath of the lamb, Cannibalism, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hannigram - Freeform, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Sickfic, WinterMurderland, for, like actually married murder husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:11:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lecterisms/pseuds/lecterisms
Summary: Hannibal wakes up with the flu on Christmas day.





	Sick Puppy

Will awakens late in the morning, as he usually does.

So late, in fact, that the morning is more than likely afternoon, if the sun shining through the bedroom window is any indication. No job, no papers to write and no classes to teach, no monsters to hunt—not for Jack Crawford, anyway.

There are, he muses to himself with a smirk, some definite perks to pretty much being a kept man.

He yawns and stretches, his arm working its way through the tangled covers to the side of the bed that belongs to the man who keeps him. He finds it empty, of course; Hannibal rarely lingers upon awakening, unless Will is also awake and ready to give him good cause to stay.

They have carved out a remarkably easy life for themselves in the years that have passed since they first went on the run together; both of them broken and bloody and clinging to their lives after the fall. The fall, that was every bit as bad as Will expected it to be, despite all of Hannibal’s prattling on about angles and trajectories during the planning stages of their staged demise. There were days where Will watched Hannibal, all but dead to the world and riddled with infection from his gut wound, where he couldn’t imagine there being light at the end of the tunnel. And yet, here is the light, all these years later: beaming obnoxiously happy through the thrown-back curtains directly into Will’s squinting eyes.

With a sigh, he throws back the blankets, padding naked to the bathroom adjoining the bedroom to splash some water on his face—scarred, now, and just beginning to show his age—before brushing his teeth. When he exits the room, he grabs a pair of pajama pants slung over the wing-back chair in the corner of the bedroom, and is just straightening when he hears the scrabble of claws on the hardwood floors.

The old scar on his cheek still pulls tight when he grins, but he grins all the same as the half-shut bedroom door swings open, pushed by the two dogs that come barging in to be the first to tell him good morning. A scruffy little mutt, just beginning to gray with age is the first in—Will’s procurement, much to Hannibal’s affectionate dismay, soon after they had settled enough. Following on his heels is his polar opposite: a huge, solid white, elegant standard poodle who clearly thinks she’s better than the lot of them, based on the condescending look that nearly constantly resides on her regal face; not unlike the man who shocked the shit out of Will the day he brought her home.

“Merry Christmas, Cephie,” he murmurs, reaching down to ruffle the little mutt’s uneven ears, one always up, the other always folded down. “Opal,” he greets the poodle deferentially, smirking when she allows him to give her a pat on the head atop the curly poof of her fur. Stifling another yawn, he moves past them, hearing them fall into step behind him as he makes a shuffling beeline for the kitchen.

He grabs his coffee mug, the one he insists on using every single morning if only to irk Hannibal, and is already halfway through cursing the ridiculous coffee maker for not delivering his coffee before his still-slumbering mind catches up enough to realize that coffee has not yet been made. He pauses, staring at the machine with a confused expression as he attempts to make sense of this development.

Hannibal always starts the machine when he gets up. _Always_.

Despite being slow on the uptake so far that morning, it takes a mere split-second for cold terror to grip Will, down to his very bones. He’s distinctly aware of the absurdity, but his imagination immediately goes into overdrive, picturing Hannibal in handcuffs somewhere—or worse, his mind supplies, _dead—_ all from an absence of coffee.

Still holding his empty coffee mug, and with the dogs scrambling to keep up, he tears through their expansive villa, nearly falling flat on his face when he skids to a stop in the drawing room. Relief pours through him at the sight of Hannibal sitting on the sofa, arching a fair eyebrow at the panic the man couldn’t have missed on Will’s features.

Will is silent as he watches the dogs cross the room, Cephie leaping up on the sofa to collapse happily against Hannibal’s side with a sigh, while Opal merely rests her chin against her master’s knee. Will blinks, before meeting Hannibal’s eyes, swallowing thickly the absurd words of distress that seem to be trying to crawl up from his throat, instead whispering weakly, “You...you didn’t make coffee.”

“My apologies,” Hannibal replies, his voice oddly hoarse. It’s then that Will notices the man doesn’t...look well. By this time of day, any day, he is normally dressed to the nines, waistcoat and all, nary a hair out of place. But today he still wears the obnoxiously patterned housecoat he prefers, his hair still a mess from sleep. His nose is red, and there’s a flush to his cheeks, a slight sheen of sweat upon his brow. A neat pile of crumpled tissues sits on the table next to the sofa. The Christmas tree, decorated and doted upon by the man himself, sits strangely unlit in the corner of the room.

It should be unsettling, to see the normally so well put together man this way.

Will thinks it’s fucking _adorable_.

“Hannibal,” Will starts, venturing closer, a small smirk beginning to turn his lips up, “Everything okay?”

The older man looks away, a snarl of distaste curling his own lips downward. “No,” he answers shortly, and the single word is twisted more than normal in his accent, helped along by a tell-tale stuffy nose. “Something is _wrong_ with me.”

Will’s smirk grows into a lopsided smile as he arches a brow of his own. “Like what?” he asks, ignoring Opal’s stink eye when she’s forced to move to one side so that Will can stand in front of her master.

Hannibal grimaces, glancing towards the pile of tissues, and Will just barely manages not to laugh when he grouses, “Something _terrible_.”

Will reaches out, laying his dry palm against Hannibal’s forehead, noting the redness of his eyes when Hannibal glances up at him through his disheveled hair. His skin is radiating heat. “I realize I’m not the doctor here,” Will says as he drops his hand to instead press his fingers to the older man’s cheek, “But I do believe you might be sick.”

Hannibal scoffs, but can’t seem to resist pressing himself into Will’s touch. “I do not get _sick_ ,” he replies with clear distaste, and Will can’t help it: this time, he does laugh.

“Everyone gets sick, Hannibal,” he replies, stroking his thumb along the scar on his cheekbone.

“Not me,” he bites back, and if he was anyone else on the planet, Will would swear the man was _pouting_. Besides that, Will notes that he is looking a little green around the gills, and he chuckles.

“Maybe it was some _one_ you ate,” he says teasingly.

Hannibal gives Will a long-suffering look and then closes his eyes for a moment, still pressing his cheek into Will’s palm. Then, he sighs and moves to stand while declaring, “Sit. I will go make your coffee.”

“Oh no you won’t,” Will replies, grasping Hannibal by his shoulders and pushing him back down on the couch. “I hate to break it to you, dear,” he says with a smile, brushing a kiss against his feverish brow once he forces him to settle, “But you’re not doing _anything_ today.”

Hannibal looks up at Will helplessly, grasping the younger man’s hand as he attempts to pull away. “But it is _Christmas_ , Will,” he laments, dangerously close to whining, his eyes flicking sadly to their unlit tree.

“I’m aware of that,” Will says with a smile, pulling away and crossing the room to plug in the tree, for his patient’s viewing pleasure. Standing in the glow of the newly lit lights, he tells Hannibal, “You are going to rest. Let me take care of you.” Hannibal looks offended, and Will arches a brow as he adds sweetly, “Please?”

Will sees the moment the fight leaves him, punctuated by him leaning heavily back into the sofa. “But the Christmas ham needs—” he starts, but Will interrupts him with a shush.

“The Christmas _ham_ ,” he tells him, making air-quotes with his fingers, “Is Peter Schwartz’s _thigh_.” He smirks, enjoying for a moment the memory of their most recent kill—a businessman, visiting their island for all the wrong reasons—as well as enjoying the long since lost pretenses between them, allowing them to speak so freely, “And it can wait. Even you can’t cook a whole spread when you’re sick. I’m not sure the ‘ham’ will be good for your stomach, anyway.”

Hannibal does the almost-pout again. “What is Christmas without our traditions?” he asks, and Will is close to losing it. He’s not sure if he’s ever seen anything more pitiful than this man— _his_ man, he corrects himself possessively—not brought down by imprisonment or a bullet wound or a full-body infection, but what surely must be a run-of-the-mill case of the flu.

He crosses the room and kisses his forehead again. “I love you,” he tells his husband of nearly five years, reaching behind him to pull the thick blanket that is draped over the arm of the chair down and wrap it around him tightly to keep him warm. “I’m going to run to the store,” he says, kissing him swiftly once more before turning to leave, stopping only briefly to rifle through Hannibal’s recipe box.

***

It’s nearly three hours later when Will returns, his best efforts to make his trip brief ruined by the apparent need to stop at two separate farmers markets to be able to find everything he needed. He quiets his steps when he hears a chorus soft snoring coming from the drawing room, and heavily laden with bags, he peeks in to see Hannibal fast asleep on the sofa, piled up with both dogs draped over him.

Will smiles to himself, then heads to the kitchen to get to work.

An hour later, after a few false starts and a few batches tossed for one reason or another, he enters the room again with a tray in hand. He sits it quietly on the coffee table, before lowering himself to sit in the small place provided on the couch that isn’t occupied by man or beast already.

He reaches out, running his fingers through Hannibal’s graying hair, smiling softly when the man stirs and opens his eyes. “Hello, Will,” he whispers, his voice crackling and rough.

“Hello, Doctor Lecter,” Will whispers back with a small smile, “How are you feeling?”

“Closer to death than ever before,” Hannibal replies, shifting to sit up, frowning when Will reaches out to help him while chuckling quietly.

“Not too sick for your usual dramatics, I see,” he replies, standing and turning to fetch the tray he brought in, before placing it in Hannibal’s lap, “I suppose that’s a good sign.”

He attempts to sniff the aroma wafting from the bowl in his lap, and frowns again when he is stopped by his blocked nose. Resorting to using his eyes, he peers closely, before he looks up at Will with a small, surprised smile. “You made me chicken in a broth,” he comments softly, his eyes shining with amazement.

“I made you _chicken soup_ ,” Will corrects, although he can’t hide his own smile as he adds, “You made me soup when I was sick, once upon a time.”

“Indeed,” Hannibal breathes, holding Will’s eyes for a long moment, long enough that Will wonders if he is thinking back to that time too, thinking of how far they have come. After a moment, his eyes drop to the tray, and he reaches to pick up the small bundle of green leaves resting beside the bowl. “And what is this for?” he asks, watching as Will plucks it from his fingers.

“Mistletoe,” Will replies, and he smiles as he reaches up, holding it above his head. He had bought it on a whim, but in truth, he couldn’t help himself. He arches a brow, waiting.

“What if you, too, contract this debilitating illness?” Hannibal asks, although his eyes have already wandered towards Will’s lips, even as he attempts to warn him away.

“Then you can make me chicken soup again,” Will whispers back, smirking, remembering perfectly how much the man bristled in his hospital room years before when Will degraded his meal with such a simple label.

“It was _not—”_ Hannibal begins, just as Will knew he would, and just as quickly he leans forward to silence Hannibal with a kiss. He keeps it chaste, in deference to the man’s _debilitating illness_ , and is still smiling when he pulls away.

“Merry Christmas, Will,” Hannibal murmurs as Will lowers the mistletoe to brush the green leaves against Hannibal’s cheek, “Thank you. For the soup. And for taking care of me. Even if your chicken soup does break with our holiday traditions.”

Will smiles, warm inside and out as their dogs press around them in the low light given off by the Christmas tree. He thinks of his life before this one, how he was alone even when he was surrounded by people, some of who even loved him.

He thinks of being the only one allowed to see Hannibal this way, ruffled and undone, overly-dramatic in this rare, vulnerable state.

He thinks of how much he loves this man, and always will. Through sickness and in health, just like the vows said.

“Merry Christmas, Hannibal,” he says softly, and then adds with a small smile, “And don’t be so sure about us breaking traditions today.”

“Oh?” Hannibal asks, arching a brow, pausing with the spoon halfway to his lips. Will merely smiles serenely, settling back against the couch to allow Cephie to burrow into his lap. Hannibal takes his first bite, stops a moment to savor the flavor, before swallowing and looking at Will like he still somehow, after all these years, finds him too good to be true. “There is something besides chicken in this broth,” he states, his eyes shining at his chef and nurse with adoration.

Will just laughs, because there always was.

**Author's Note:**

> A little something for #wintermurderland :) Happy whatever-you-celebrate, y'all.
> 
> Born from a twitter conversation about confirmed drama queen Hannibal acting like Chris Traeger when he gets sick. His body is a microchip and it's been compromised.


End file.
